Hi, everybody.
Welcome to module one.
This module sets the tone and the basis, the foundation
for the rest of this semester.
So it's important to be well grounded
in the basics of the US legal system.
Some of you probably already know this, others do not.
So this is just where we're gonna start
to make sure we are all on the same page.
In high school, in many high schools,
you had civics lessons
where we talked about what are the branches of government,
what is political science,
how do we deal with public affairs
and the duties of citizens?
Many hated it, some loved it.
You can guess how I felt about it.
Much of this course
is going to revolve around the legal system, legal cases,
and as I talked about in the introduction,
these are real life situations.
They're hard situations.
They evolve, they devolve into litigation,
and it results in judicial decisions or pronouncements
that we tend to call opinions.
So a lot of times in this course,
you're going to read a judicial opinion.
These cases are a reflection
of something that happened previously, sometimes years ago,
because as those cases work their way up through appeals,
it takes quite a long time.
Another thing to keep in mind is we're looking at the facts
as these higher courts decided more important facts.
So a lot of times, you might think,
"Is there more to this story,
or are we hearing the whole story,
or is part of the story missing?"
Yes, could very well be, because as judges wrote decisions,
they might have kept certain facts
that they found important to the situation
and discarded facts
they did not think was important to the decision.
To discuss the cases and opinions presented,
you really have to understand
where the case stands in the hierarchy.
So in the legal system, we have this hierarchy,
as you probably know.
We have kind of these local district level courts,
and that can be both a state or a federal model.
Then you have these kind of appellate courts,
that first level that oversees the original decisions,
and then we have kind of that third level,
which is like the Supreme Court of the United States,
or in various states, it could be the Supreme Court
or the Law Court or the Court of Final Appeals.
They can be all called different things.
So basically think of the courts
as having these three levels.
That's an oversimplification,
but that'll kind of help you figure out where this case is.
You may also consider the questions in the module.
These are things to think about as you read a case.
If you haven't read a case before,
just think about who are the parties here?
Just stop and think about, wait, who are the parties here?
Often list the parties and the titles,
but that can be confusing.
Sometimes it has multiple parties.
Sometimes it has an anonymous party.
If it's anonymous, why do you think it could be anonymous?
So who brought that action?
Where's the court?
You know, it can be a state or federal court,
and so sometimes you just have to figure out
what region it is.
Are you at the trial court decision level,
or are you much higher?
So we call that the appellate history, where the case is.
You know, facts we talked about.
Are there facts that you would like to know about
that you're not seeing?
Do you feel like something is totally missing?
Do you feel like certain facts were pulled
to make the decision in a certain way?
Issues, like what are the precise issues being litigated?
One of the hardest things I think
about understanding legal opinions
is they're really crafted very, very narrowly
to answer a precise question.
So sometimes you just read those facts
and you think this is about this whole situation,
but judges often narrow it down
to a single or a few principles,
so that those principles can apply to future cases.
There's a principle that you understand,
like, what do we take away from this?
And likewise, just with the facts,
do you agree with the way the court has framed that issue?
How do they frame that issue
that they're going to decide on?
Do you agree with really that's what's going on here?
And then what was the decision, you know?
We often agree or disagree with these decisions.
We all know, can think of decisions
that we thought were just very way off base
in how they were decided.
What's the rationale there?
And then as the course moves on,
we're gonna continue to think about implications.
So what does that mean, and how does that affect us?
An easy example is the Affordable Care Act, right?
The Affordable Care Act in 2011,
multiple attempts to have courts rule it unconstitutional.
Well, what's the implication of that,
is that they would have basically said
the law is undone, unenforceable.
That's not always the case.
Judges don't always say,
"Yes, we're either calling this whole law
enforceable or not."
There's a lot of different nuances to that.
So you might wanna just think about the implications.
Often in healthcare,
implications can be nuanced, wide ranging.
And as we think about healthcare administration, you know,
how do healthcare administrators prepare to deal with this?
Often healthcare administrators,
whether or not they were lawyers,
do have to have an understanding of the law,
how it impacts healthcare and their work.
So this week, we're gonna talk about just some basics.
What are the basics, foundations of our system?
How does courts impact law?
What do judicial decisions do?
How is that tied to healthcare?
And where does that leave us?
And that'll just get us into module two,
where we can start talking
a little bit about the history of healthcare
and where we're at now.
So make sure to check out the class notes.
The slides will be explained a little bit more next week,
and I'll see you in the Yellowdig discussion forum.